One is never too old or too young to be a History Hero. Without the documentation done by young William Harrison Larkin, Jr., at Goose Rocks Beach in the late 1800s we might never have known the location of the buried shipwrecks at Goose Rocks Beach. Two wrecks lie between The Point and Shore Goose Rocks, according to a map Will drew c.1892. He called the one further east, the “Old Wreck.”

I have found reports of only two vessels that went aground at Goose Rocks Beach. The oldest of the two was mentioned in the 1853 issue of American Seamen’s Friend.

Schooner Rachel Ann, Capt. Knights, “from Boston, of and for North Yarmouth, went ashore 22d [September 22, 1852] on the “Goose Rocks” a few miles east of Goat Island, Kennebunkport, and immediately went to pieces. The day was clear, and the wind off the land, the only man on deck being asleep. The sails, rigging, chains, etc., were all saved and sold on the beach 24th.”

We have a photograph of the remains of the Old Wreck, though nobody I know has ever seen it uncovered. Will Larkin also sketched it in his ever-present sketchbook when it was briefly exposed in 1888. He drew the map of Goose Rocks while on a summer break from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the early 1890s. The cottage he summered at for most of his life was at the corner of Bradway and Kings Highway. It did not survive the Fire of ‘47

In October 1878, it was reported in the Eastern Star that Captain Richard Nunan ran the Fishing Schooner Carrie E Nunan aground at Goose Rocks in deep fog and high seas. The crew was saved but the uninsured schooner, valued at $2500, was a total loss. It was her second and final wreck. She was launched on October 28, 1867 from the William Crawford shipyard near the South Congregational Church in Kennebunkport. Seven months later, the 30-ton fishing schooner went ashore on Folly Island in Cape Porpoise Harbor. She was repaired and returned to sail with the Nunan Fleet for ten years.

Have you ever seen the Goose Rocks Beach shipwrecks?